


Finding the Right Words

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse, Demon Knights
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Cultural Differences, F/M, First Kiss, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exoristos is an Amazon.  Amazons do not love men.  Shining Knight is a man.  One of these propositions must be wrong.  Ex used to think she knew which one, but now she's not so sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding the Right Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/gifts).



Al Jabr had enjoyed presenting logic puzzles to the group during their travels: paradoxes, contradictions. As she rides east, the woman who calls herself Exoristos contemplates one of her own.

Proposition A: Exoristos is an Amazon.

Proposition B: No Amazon could love a man.

Proposition C: Sir Ystin is a man.

They are incompatible. And so, when Ex looks over at Shining Knight on that snow-white pegasus, walking rather than flying so that they can talk and laugh and argue (especially argue) together--and when she feels what she is feeling, she knows one of these three statements _must_ be wrong. When she had first felt this thing that burns at her heart like sweet vitriol, she had been sure it was Proposition C that must be the error. But she has experienced enough, seen enough, become just wise enough to wonder if perhaps it is Proposition B. (Or perhaps--but no, not Proposition A, she will never give up Proposition A.) She is _trying_ to use the pronouns Ystin prefers, even when merely thinking about--about _him._

And she does. 

Often.

They ride together into the sunrise, away from their companions, and the black diamond is a torment to Exoristos. Its evil seems to eat at the corners of her mind, darkening her vision, until anger and pain well up in her beyond bearing. When Ystin realizes that once again the diamond's bale is ascendent, they stop and make camp, and he makes a fire while Ex curls up around the diamond in a helpless agony of grief and rage, and then he puts her head in his lap and sings to her, songs of Camelot, stroking her hair. The songs and Ystin's hands on her keep the darkness at bay, keep her from the abyss.

They tried to enter a town once, but they could see the peoples' eyes darken as the diamond came near them, hear them whispering. It was too dangerous--to the village, not to them--to stay. So now they keep to the wilderness, just the two of them, and Ex is ashamed at how happy she is to be alone with Ystin as much as possible.

The nights grow colder, and although Ex is impervious to the cold, Ystin is not. He chafes his arms together, teeth chattering, until Ex suggests they sleep curled up together. She is afraid he will refuse, that her need is so nakedly obvious, but he says yes without any hesitation.

She lies next to him under their thin blanket, listening to their mounts stamp and blow in the darkness, and aches to put her arms around him and draw him closer, to touch that slender and powerful body.. Fear stops her. What if she says the wrong thing, what if she causes unforgivable offense? She has already so often said the wrong thing, like the time she blurted out "But why would anyone _want_ to be a man?" and watched Ystin's face close up before he explained coldly that _wanting_ had nothing to do with it.

The remote annoyance had hurt far less than the disappointment in his eyes.

So she lies next to him in silence, her tormenting desire less strong than her fear of losing him. She has made so many mistakes, she has caused so much harm. 

Beside her the black diamond pulses like a malign heart, and she knows that only she is wicked enough to deserve to be its bearer.

They ride on, toward the mountains where Ystin has heard the Grail might be found. "The Grail's power can rid the world of the evil you carry," he says confidently. They talk as they ride side-by-side, on every subject in the world: on the care of horses, on the existence of Atlantis, on the best way to cook rabbit, on the chance of rain in the evening. In nearly every case they end up arguing, sometimes for hours, usually with vigorous good humor and no hard feelings. Sometimes the argument turns bitter, some raw nerve is touched, and Shining Knight kicks his steed into flight, yelling over his shoulder that he can't argue with someone so _stupid._ He soars in the air above Ex for hours as she rides, fuming over the unfairness that has saddled her with someone so blind to the realities of the world.

Underneath her anger, she tries to ignore the gnawing fear: that he will fly away forever, free of her. She tries not to follow him with her eyes.

Eventually he comes back down with a great swoop of feathered wings, his anger forgotten or put aside, a quick apology on his lips. He forgives as easily as he loses his temper--not the smallest thing Ex doesn't understand about him.

She learns to apologize first sometimes, before Vanguard's hooves can touch the ground, delighting in the absolution in his eyes.

Sometimes they sing together along the road, and he flies ahead and brings back flowers to put in her hair, and the black diamond is strangely light against her breast.

Then one night, as they lie in each other's arms (so chastely it makes Ex feel half-mad with desire) a long, wavering howl echoes from the woods around them, and soon the shadows are alight with emerald eyes.

"Wargs!" cries Shining Knight, leaping up and unsheathing his sword. And indeed, the firelight reveals monstrous wolves, their hackles like iron and their eyes burning with supernatural intelligence.

They fight back-to-back with ferocious exaltation, wave after wave of russet wargs falling before them. Vanguard swoops down from the sky to batter a warg with furious hooves, and another leaps at her, its fangs snapping at her snowy wings

Ex charges toward Vanguard, her hammer smashing the warg's ribcage like rotten fruit, and the pegasus takes to the skies once more. A quick snarl is her only warning as another warg pounces at her, and she flings up her hammer barely in time to deflect its leap. It lands as light as a cat and comes back at her throat.

 _"Ex!"_ Ystin's voice is a clarion call as he wrenches his sword from the body of a warg and interposes himself between her and her attacker, his blow cleaving its skull.

Silence falls abruptly and the battle is over, their campsite heaped high with dead wargs and themselves blood-splattered but alive.

Whirling, Ex glares at Ystin. _"How dare you?"_ She screams, her whole body shaking with rage as Ystin stares back at her, bewildered. "Damn your soul and your pointless chivalry to Hades, I will _not_ have you try to protect me just because you're a man! You condescending, patronizing, chauvinist--"

Her fury is derailed entirely when Ystin lunges at her and drags her into a kiss. She keeps trying to open her mouth to yell at him some more, but after a little while she gives it up and decides to focus on the kissing instead.

And as it turns out, after all her worrying about saying the wrong thing, she doesn't need to say anything at all.


End file.
